As digital media technologies have advanced, personal digital media collections have grown in size and popularity. A typical personal digital media collection, which may include numerous photos, songs, e-books, audio books, movies, videos, and/or other forms of media content, may be stored locally on a user's device (e.g., a personal computer or portable media player device) or hosted at a remote data center.
Typically, a user utilizes a software application known as a media player to manage and play back media content included in the user's personal digital media collection (e.g., to manage and play back songs in the user's personal digital music library). Using a media player, the user is able add, delete, and/or organize media content in the user's personal digital media collection. For example, a conventional media player provides functionality that allows the user to create a playlist by selecting desired media content from the user's personal digital media collection for inclusion in the playlist. The media player is able to play back the playlist for experiencing by the user. Certain media players provide functionality for randomizing the playback of the playlist such that media content instances included in the playlist are randomly selected for playback. Such randomized playback is commonly referred to as “random” or “shuffle” playback.
There remains room to improve conventional media players and other tools for managing and playing back media content included in a personal digital media content library. For example, new and/or improved services, features, functions, and/or user interfaces related to managing personal digital media content libraries, managing media content playlists, and/or controlling playback of media content are desired. To illustrate just one example, conventional media players do not provide a user with functionality to control how media content included in a playlist is selected for playback during “random” or “shuffle” playback of the playlist. To illustrate another example, conventional media players do not provide a user with robust and/or useful media content management functionality that can be accessed and used “on the fly” in the context of media content playback.